Dear Members,
We all are feeling the tremendous impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our work and our personal lives. With the extension of local court closures, and the announcement this week that California’s public schools are not expected to return to classroom sessions this year, we understand that health concerns and disruptions to our daily lives have led to further uncertainty and anxiety for many of you.
As we all adjust to an evolving “new normal,” we’re still navigating what that means. I understand how unsettling that can be in our lives as lawyers, as I am navigating shifts in my own law practice. I also am hearing from our fellow attorneys facing daily changes and challenges.
I’m here to let you know that whatever range of emotions you’re experiencing during this pandemic—you are not alone. We see you. We hear you. And we are here for you.
Through the San Diego County Bar Association, you are connected to an amazing community of peers, colleagues, and friends—a connection we all can leverage for mutual support, knowledge-sharing, and collaboration. Together we will learn how to adapt, succeed, and help one another and the community at large.
To that end, as we strive to re-direct resources to give you what you need from your County Bar, we want to hear from you. How can the SDCBA best support you in the coming months? Many of you already have answered the call. If you haven’t yet, please help us understand your needs by taking this brief, 5-minute survey.
Helping each of us and our legal community overcome challenges like these is one of the very reasons the SDCBA was formed more than 120 years ago. While our latest challenges are of a scale we haven’t experienced in generations, they are not unprecedented. We’ve been there before—through two world wars, the Great Depression, and several recessions. Through all of these times, the SDCBA has helped the San Diego legal community come together and weather the storm. That’s been an integral part of our mission since our founding in 1899, and remains our top priority today.
Which is to say, you can consider the SDCBA your port in the storm—to gain cover, re-fortify, and surge ahead. To that end, here’s what we have done, and are doing, to support you.
Bar Center update: First, as you know, we’ve taken every precaution to safeguard the health of our staff, our members and their clients, and the public, by closing the Bar Center a month ago, ahead of the curve. At this time, we have decided to keep the Bar Center closed through May 1, and will re-evaluate the health and safety situation at that time. Of course, if circumstances change to allow us to re-open sooner, we will.
Virtual staff office: Our staff has been working remotely since March 16. They are fully-equipped to continue serving you. That includes our Lawyer Referral and Information Service, which is taking calls from the public and making referrals to attorneys just as before. Also, the SDCBA’s Board, Committees, and Sections continue to collaborate virtually, working on your behalf to bring you relevant, helpful content and to keep the organization moving forward.
Communication channels: We are working hard to keep you updated with timely, important information via email, social media, and on our website, including a special webpage dedicated to updates from state and federal trial and appellate courts across California, community resources, helpful articles, educational webinars, and technology resources.
Programming. In addition to rescheduling some signature events and moving all other programs to webinars, we are working to produce content specifically designed to help you cope and succeed in the new normal—covering topics such as working remotely, conducting legal functions via video conferencing, and wellness programming, including yoga (offered daily from 8-9 a.m.) and guided meditation sessions. In the coming weeks, we will host sessions on marketing your business in a down economy and staying connected while social distancing, as well as a virtual lunch/town hall with Executive Director Jill Epstein and me on April 15 at 12:30 p.m.
We also welcome your ideas. Please respond to the survey to let us know what you’d like to see from us, as well as if you have specific expertise to share with our membership in a webinar or article in the coming weeks or months.
Listservs. One of the best ways the SDCBA can help you is not new at all—and that’s with our listservs. We have listservs for each of our Sections, which are FREE to join. To join a Section, visit “My Profile” to log in and select the Section(s) of interest to you. Thousands of SDCBA members are ready to collaborate with and support you on our listservs. With this wonderful community, you never have to go it alone.
This Week at the Bar – Your “go-to” resource: Finally, for the past several weeks, Executive Director Jill Epstein and I have provided special email communications with updates from the SDCBA, as we felt that was necessary to communicate new information in a dynamic and rapidly-changing environment. From here on out, we encourage you to read our regular Monday afternoon email publication, This Week at the Bar, for essential information about Bar Center operations and SDCBA activities. If there is urgent information we need to convey, we’ll send a special email and post on social media.
In closing, the most important thing I can say is this: in all of these ways and more, the SDCBA is here for you. Nothing drives this point home more strongly than the statement of our core values—“Inclusion and Community define us, Innovation and Leadership propel us, your Growth motivates us, and Celebrating you and the profession IS us.” We will hold true to these values, and to serving you.
Thank you for everything you do in our community, and thank you for being a member. We look forward to continuing to serve you.
Johanna Schiavoni
SDCBA President